Prayer for Christian Unity

We celebrate the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity from January 18 to January 25th . Every Christian is called to be an instrument of the reconciling love of Christ in the world so that the divisions that exist within the Christian Church and within the larger world can be healed. The organizers of this year’s Week of Prayer invite us to reflect on a passage from St. Paul’s Second Letter to the Corinthians. “So, if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation…All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us. So, we are ambassadors for Christ…” We are a new creation in Christ. By virtue of our baptism, Christ dwells in us and we dwell in Christ. We, therefore, should be the incarnation of Christ for our world. In this instance, we should seek to incarnate the reconciling love of Christ in our lives. We incarnate the reconciling love of Christ in our lives when we recognize all persons as our brothers and sisters and do not exclude anyone from our care or concern because of their race, their religion, their social class, their sexual orientation. We incarnate the reconciling love of Christ in our world when we ‘welcome the stranger,’ that is, when we offer our welcome to migrants and refugees – all those who are seeking to escape from persecution, violence and unspeakable poverty. We incarnate the reconciling love of Christ in our world, when we pray for all Christians and participate in ecumenical prayer with other Christians. We incarnate the reconciling love of Christ in our world when we are instruments of forgiveness and healing. Only when Christians embrace their vocation as agents of Christ’s reconciling love in the world can we hope for a world in which there is true and enduring peace. In this New Year, let us remember that we are ambassadors for Christ – persons called to incarnate in our lives the reconciling love of Jesus Christ.